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Look Out For Arbitration Clauses in Your Contracts
Arbitration clauses are dangerous to anyone signing any form of agreement with a company. This includes your mortgage agreement, cellular phone agreement, and even a sales agreement or invoice from a business or repairman.
Many times you sign such an agreement without reading it. You should read it because you may be signing away some important rights. Arbitration clauses deprive you of the right to access the court system. Arbitration clauses provide that in the event of a dispute (i.e., the company fails to live up to their promises) you would have to go to arbitration and would not be able to go to court and have your case heard by judge or a jury made up of your peers and community members.
Some of us may say that arbitration is thus "a good thing" but that is far from accurate. Arbitration would require you to pay for your expenses and sometimes the expenses, including costly attorneys fees, of the other side. The opposite typically happens when you go to an attorney for purposes of protecting your rights as a consumer. For instance, there are numerous laws both State and Federal which provide that the business or corporation pay your attorney fees should you win. When arbitration is involved, you pay whether you win or lose. The problem is that the costs of arbitration can be very high; most people cannot afford to fight for their rights under arbitration because of the costs. But, understand that much of the reason why companies put arbitration clause language in their agreements is to prevent many people from being able to enforce their rights as a consumer.
What can you do to prevent this? Arbitration clauses are thrown in as a paragraph or few sentences typically in an agreement. You have the choice of modifying or deleting that language. Keep in mind that the risk is that the party you are doing business with may not want to go through with the deal, but some or most would want your business regardless. There are also times when your modifying an agreement invalidates it. However, there are many agreements that do not have this restriction on modification and then you can add what you please.